Several months ago, I was fairly openly criticized for stating that AMD would not have a 65nm processor this year. Internal roadmaps showed the Brisbane 65nm desktop processors would launch on December 5th, 2006. Yet almost every contact I had spoken to in the supply chain -- from the engineers to the distributors -- unanimously claimed there was virtually no chance the company would ship a 65nm product this year.

Here we are, a week after the supposed 65nm AMD launch, and yet there is not a chip on the market. Instead, AMD today quietly slipped in the new Stepping "F3" Athlon 64 X2s, the X2 5600+ and 5400+, which we also put on our roadmaps. Originally these chips were slated to hit distributors even before the 65nm Brisbane chips, but it seems as though even this estimate was over-optimistic.

With the upcoming holidays and the chaos that ensues, it would be fairly safe to say that even if these new processors show up on Newegg (or Dell, as AMD initially said all Brisbane chips will be for OEM customers only) tomorrow, consumers will have no chance to buy any en masse.

Granted, in 2007 we're still going to see some awesome 65nm stuff from AMD. The native quad-core Stars and Cities processors will still dominate the majority of AMD/Intel processor headlines -- even before the chip launches you can be assured DailyTech will have one of the first samples.

"We don't know how to make a $500 computer that's not a piece of junk." -- Apple CEO Steve Jobs